Our High Streets – the new ghost towns

I love shopping. When I can afford it. Or even just going for a wander round the shops to see some nice things and cheer myself up. ‘Retail therapy’ I think its called. Probably invented to make us feel we are doing good by shopping! When I was growing up high streets were full of independent retailers selling all kinds of things. Greengrocers, butchers, fishmongers, chemists, haberdashers, and boutiques – tons of them! It was heaven to go into different boutiques and find different clothes in each one.

I find nothing more depressing than going into a Gap now for instance…. everything the same, and no difference whichever branch you go to.. Nothing wrong with Gap in itself of course, it’s just that since all the small shops are becoming priced out or forced out, shopping has become rather, well, BORING… and maybe, just maybe, we would make more effort to buy things in shops if there was more individual choice, which didn’t used to mean higher prices…

Many things have contributed to the demise and the mundanity of the high street – online shopping of course being a big factor. We were encouraged to shop online – constant spam and online ads encouraging us to buy stuff we may have glanced at orGoogled, special deals for ordering online, free delivery, free returns… I work in an office and the amount of parcels that come and go all day from women (and men of course) who order whatever they fancy online and then send back what doesn’t fit etc. (those white and black mottled plastic parcels seem to be on constant rotation!).

I’m sure I’ve read that constantly ordering stuff and sending it back pushes the prices up… Shops save a fortune on overheads by getting us to shop online – less staff, no rent for the shops, no heating and so on, but now its apparently our fault that many big name shops are folding or cutting back on stores – even Marks and Spencer and House of Fraser!

There are other factors too of course. Remember that more people are working from home so are less inclined to wander round the shops at lunchtime. This has also reduced how many people travel on public transport, which I guess will ultimately push the cost of fares up even more. House prices and mortgages have gone up hugely so people have less spare cash. Yes, people spend a lot on mobile phones etc, but these are one off purchases that last a year or two at least and are used for so much now – music, emailing, messaging, watching films, even making phone calls (!) and yes of course for ordering more stuff online!

But globalisation has played a huge part – small shops cannot survive and high streets are now full of huge global names from around the world, and indeed if you go to many high streets around the UK, they all look the same! In fact, I would say around the world too. No variety or individualism whatsoever. People don’t like it, but only the relatively wealthy can change it for themselves by ‘gentrifying’ certain areas and insisting on more choice. So having a fishmongers or butchers or a farmers’ market is now becoming common in some areas – but only the wealthy can afford it! The rest of us are dumped off with supermarkets – a great invention at the time, but they too have pushed out smaller shops and helped towards the end of the busy high street.

I remember not so long ago in a high street near me there were all the shops I mentioned earlier, including a grocers where they weighed everything for you and a haberdashery where everything was behind the counter and someone would fetch it for you… and it was a WORKING CLASS area – not expensive at all – all gone now of course.

The saddest ones for me were Woolworths – a big part of my childhood – and British Home Stores – the latter killed by Sir Philip Green’s greed and disinterest. He plundered it and then sold it to a known serial bankrupt for £1, thus destroying the pensions and livelihoods of many loyal workers – a scandal that was never properly dealt with in my opinion. In fact, he allegedly did it to avoid pension liability. The callousness of some of the unbelievably rich always shocks me – he hardly needed any more money did he?

I guess other factors are soaring rents for shops, the congestion charge (in London) and huge parking fees (if you can park at all), over zealous traffic wardens, an expensive, unreliable and overcrowded public transport system and maybe even fear of rising street crime – moped mugging for instance – all play their part in why our high streets have become so boring and ultimately why shops are closing regularly and staff are losing their jobs.

Where that leaves older people or many of us who don’t want to shop online I don’t know. I myself do shop online for some things, but for clothes and shoes I like to go into a shop and try them and have a look in a mirror! Who doesn’t really? I know many younger people who love to physically shop on a high street but it seems that first we have lost any choice in the shops we can choose from or what we can buy and now we are losing the opportunity to even HAVE shops to go to.

It’s all part of the loss of choice, of individuality, of small businesses, of independent retailers, and of course the hollowing out of our towns and cities by the overpricing of everything from housing, transport, rents for businesses and anything you can think of. (All ultimately to make room probably to build more overpriced properties that only foreign investors can afford…. )

What sad, lonely, boring and isolated society we are heading towards…

Like the song said many years ago … This Town is becoming like a Ghost Town…. It certainly is!

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20 Comments

Roger Gough
on June 26, 2018 at 1:26 pm

Dependent on which ‘news’ report you read, about (let’s say) £10 billion is sent overseas by foreign workers from the UK every year. That’s a fair chunk out of High Street receipts and might have some effect. And why not? Were I one, I’d do the same and then pop down to the the food bank who would keep me ticking over nicely. Post-Grenfell you may have seen that one “Gent” who claimed to have been visiting the Tower (not living there mark you) was given over £50,000 (and other benefits) to assuage his grief. The court report also mentioned that he had been an illegal immigrant for 20 years. A woman jailed at the same time had pretty much the same profile. How in the name of Sam Adams is one able to survive here with that background? Noticeable though that these ‘discrepancies’ only came to light once the Police became involved. Council services have a lot to answer for in my book – the operative who waved these two through should be sacked immediately. Further re Grenfell: one resident was found to have been running an unlawful drug producing unit there at the time of the fire and had convictions for running other, serious unlawful operations there too. To date about 18 people have been arrested over allegations of fraud in the wake of the disaster. One’s confidence in the Fire Service cannot have been enhanced by the claim of the Chief Officer in charge on the night that he hadn’t been briefed in how to deal with such an event. Could this be an effect of Common Purpose? Sorry for wandering off topic.

Interestingly the convenience store / shopping mall/ destination of choice was driven by the baby boomer generation, who apparently could not see or refused to see what would happen if you put all your shopping eggs in one basket
that they would end up with less ‘choice of either store or product’ which as you point out has happened in many consumer areas, food, clothes, cars are good examples.
Talking to one section manager of one of the High Street names, no longer with us , he quoted the figure of £1 million P.A in lease, rates , and salaries before heating, lighting and so on. If that was an accurate figure that’s one awful lot of product to sell 9 to 5 .
In the USA though, the picture is changing even faster in many states with consumer shopping palaces closing down, along oddly enough with golf courses and sports clubs going the same way. Coming here to your local town or city soon?

Did anyone ever wonder why there are so many kebab shops? You may not know this, but in order to comply with the EU’s Ankara Agreement with Turkey, the UK allows Turkish people to migrate here using a ‘Turkish Businesspersons Visa’. All any Turk needs to do to get this is produce a business plan for e.g. a kebab shop. No joke. Also their family, including children under 21 (!) are allowed to join them. After an initial 12 month and then 3 year period, they get indefinite leave to remain unless they did something seriously wrong. Its an absolute joke, there is a roaring trade in Istanbul in standard kebab shop business plans that you just need to fill in a few blanks and bingo, emigration to the UK for you and your family.

Thanks for highlighting this. Now I know why someone has just opened a Turkish restaurant here in our village – alongside the Indian, Thai and Chinese versions.
The demand for Turkish food around here must be negligible?
No doubt the Turks will not be serving yummy gammon steaks or tasty spare ribs?
Luckily at the other end of the row of shops, we still have the ever popular ‘chippy’.

I believe the way it works is that a Turk already here will open a new restaurant and then ‘sell’ it back in Turkey, and get a lot more money for it because it comes with the immigration rights. Barber shops are the same racket.

Simply astonishing but perhaps to be expected from the EU. Of course we are never asked about such things nor does our useless government resist; they simply roll over and try to hide it. Yet another of a legion of reasons why we need out and quickly.

Personally I blame the government, the civil service and the UK population.
In many ways over half of the descendants of pre 1945, UK population deserve what will happen.
They will only think about it when the options for change are too drastic.
The young people under 18, mostly, are not at fault.
Fair play to the immigrants.

Totally agree, many of the post war generation see themselves as somehow above what is happening in towns and cities all over the U.K. Only when something happens to disturb their charmed lives for example when they need the public services . What a shock they will get when they need urgent medical attention or long term care.

Well said. If anyone is to blame for the sorry state we are in, it is the British people themselves. We must avoid going down the road of demonising immigrants – demonise the EU and the British political establishment and remind those who complain about migration numbers but do not engage in the political process, that they are in no position to complain.

All down to the Retail Price Maintenance Act, Ted Heath 1972.He was forced to pass it before we could join. ( But basically because he had no understanding of anything but politics, and billionaires sailing boats, and young crewmembers. He was supported by {You’ve guessed it -Phillip Green } It’s purpose was the destruction of Brit manufacturing and its home market. By warping natural simple rules of thumb and common sense in the name of shoppers greed.

The whole situation has now morphed into a whole different ball game all due to ” unforeseen circumstances “. Except to say that scrapping the act would eventually solve the problem of internet retail. and,. as a bye product, Globalisation.

Better still Hugo. Do as I do and just leave it to your wife or GF… Seriously though councils at all levels have been allowed to interfere in everything. I worked in local government many years ago and its powers were restricted as I recall.

My nearest ‘high street’ is Acocks Green Village (Birmingham), reading through comments on their Facebook page, the most common complaint is that there are too many charity shops and takeaways. It seems that whenever a new shop unit becomes available, it is nearly always some kind of charity shop that opens.

And there is good reason for this: charity shops can receive up to 80% business rates reduction. And of course, if the staff are volunteers, there are very little staff overhead costs involved.

Now I’m no major fan of shopping myself, but when I was in Gibraltar last year, walking up and down Main Street, it took me back in time to when British high streets were bustling with shoppers, and you had all the big-name brand stores available. (It reminded me of Dudley high street when I was a small child!).

But even the shopping centres suffer; for instance up at the Swan Shopping Centre here in South Yardley, there are a number of shop units empty, the most recent ones being Brantano and Pets At Home.

I think there is a wider agenda at work, certainly the large global corporate retailers would like nothing more than for all small businesses to be crushed out of existence. And then of course you have Amazon trying to do the same with online retailers…

Interesting article. The retail apocolypse has already started to hit the US and is spreading and it’s not Internet sales that is causing it as this still only accounts for ten percent of retail purchases.

The market is getting very competitive however, as you say the cost of living is sky rocketong and the retailers are fighting for a share in a diminishing marketplace for smaller and smaller profit margins. For Brick and Mortar stores, the big killer is the cost of holding stock.

Just think what it must be like to have, let’s say, a million pounds worth of stock, this represents a massive business risk until it’s sold and may not sell or may have to be sold at knock down prices.

Small retailers rarely understand just how much footfall they will need to break even, let alone make a profit. They’d have to have customers walking in all day and buying stuff. The remaining small retailers in a high street, if you look, their shops will be empty most of the time, with just the occassional prospective customer walking in, who may or may not make a purchase.

Expect things to get a lot worse and it’s going to hit the bigger retailers hard as well as time goes on.

Town centres are increasingly faceless by day and hostile at night, devoid of regular inhabitants.

The character of many expensive to visit town centres with small shops-business, pubs, open & covered markets has been mutated by coffee shops, council regulations, government policy, taxes – business rates, car parking fees and fines, supermarkets, chain stores and Amazon style digital shopping. They are awkward to navigate in the daytime, infested by clipboard scammers, the sad homeless, people affected by drugs and an army of traffic wardens all under the friendly gaze of omnipresent CCTV.

Not all town and city centres are like this, but the trend is going steadily in one direction.